Indonesian forces kill leader of ISIS-linked terror group in shootout
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PARIGI (Indonesia) • The leader of a militant network in Indonesia has been killed in a shootout with security forces, police said yesterday.
Ali Kalora, head of the East Indonesia Mujahideen (MIT), was shot dead last Saturday in the Sulawesi jungle along with another member, Jaka Ramadhan.
Police have launched a manhunt for four other militants from the MIT, a group that has links with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). "We will keep looking until we get them," Mr Rudy Sufahriadi, police chief of Central Sulawesi province, said.
The weekend shootout took place two months after the authorities shot two suspected members of the group in the same Parigi Moutong district, near the extremist hotbed Poso district.
Designated a terrorist organisation by the United States, MIT is among dozens of radical groups across the South-east Asian archipelago that have pledged allegiance to ISIS.
After hiding out in the jungles of Sulawesi for years, the network is now estimated to have just a handful of members.
But it has been accused of plotting several deadly attacks, including most recently killing four farmers - and reportedly beheading one - in a remote village in May.
Kalora took over leadership of MIT after the country's most-wanted extremist, Santoso, was shot dead by troops in 2016.
After Indonesia suffered a string of Islamic extremist attacks in the early 2000s, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people, the authorities launched a crackdown that weakened some of the most dangerous networks.
But the country has continued to wrestle with Islamist militancy and terror attacks.
Separately, Malaysia's foreign ministry last Saturday said it was monitoring the detention of a citizen who allegedly entered Somalia to engage in the activities of the Al-Shabab militant group, The Star reported.
Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said Malaysian embassy officials in Sudan had visited the man, known as Ahmad Mustakim Abdul Hamid, to ensure his welfare and legal needs were taken care of.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
